Horvat is both different, and similar. He’s quiet, and driven, still feeling his way around the NHL and his locker-room.

He has leadership qualities, many of them, but for now they seep from the effort he puts in, not any words at intermission or after games. His voice remains somewhat muted in the room, but that part will change with time, as it evolved for the Sedins.

Horvat, however, was never destined to take Henrik’s crown. He may be captain one day, but first-line centre? Please.

But be warned. He has a history of proving people wrong.

They said Horvat was too slow. He got faster.

They said the Canucks should have drafted Valeri Nichushkin. He’s in Russia.

They said Horvat was a third-line centre. Then, the second half of last season happened. Then, he led the team in scoring. Thirty points in the Canucks’ final 43 games.

Was it meaningless production in meaningless games in a garbage season?

Or did boom go the dynamite?

Off the ice, Horvat is genuine and easy to read.

He loves Vancouver, and somehow has enjoyed all his interactions with fans, even during the crushing disappointment he endured in the first few months of last season.

“I’ve never been overwhelmed,” Horvat says. “Around the city, I go out, I walk around, I go to the mall. I do regular things, and everyone has been always positive with me.”

Big things were expected of Horvat last autumn, following a pre-season in which he stitched together a string of drool-worthy highlights.

But it took about a minute for all that promise to evaporate.

“I got too confident going in,” Horvat says. “I was thinking it was going to be easy, and it backfired on me. It gave me a wake-up call. This league is no joke.”

The lowest point was during a mid-December road trip. The Canucks lost consecutive games to Chicago, Minnesota and Philadelphia by an 11-2 spread.

“We were losing quite a bit,” Horvat says. “That game in Minnesota was the lowest point. I just thought, ‘This isn’t fun any more. I’m sick of losing. I’m sick of doing this.’

“But after that something clicked. Sven (Baertschi) and I started clicking. Everything started to click, because we were sick of having to deal with disappointment. We had to figure it out, and we did.”

When the season ended, Horvat had 40 points. That’s producing solid second-line production at 20 years old.

If he can get to 50 this season, his third, he will be in the ballpark of first-line production.

Wait, what?

On the ice, Horvat remains the Canucks’ biggest mystery.

The existing narrative is that he’s a good defensive centre with shutdown upside. But, by just about any measure, he was the team’s worst penalty-killer last season.

To put it in perspective, teams averaged 69.32 shots per hour when Horvat was killing penalties. It was the highest on the team. By comparison, opponents averaged just 43.18 shots per hour when Markus Granlund was killing penalties.

Part of this is just how many responsibilities fall Horvat’s way: win important, defensive-zone faceoffs; produce on the power play; kill penalties; play a matchup shutdown role; and, of course, score.

Can he do it all?

“I know junior is a totally different league, but I did do it all there,” Horvat says. “I feel I’m the type of player that can do all that. “It takes time to get on top of it all. You have to focus on the little things of each. You can’t totally focus on the power play. You have to focus on both.

“You have to take a little bit of each away, to do both well.”

It’s a lot to ask of a 21-year-old. Can he do it all? Is it too much? Could he be better in certain areas if he didn’t have this much on his plate?

“I worried about that last year,” coach Willie Desjardins says. “For sure, I did. I think we put him in some situations that weren’t fair. A good player knows what you need.

“He knew we needed scoring. So he changed his game to score. So did Jannik Hansen. They went, ‘Yeah, we need scoring, I have to contribute more.’

“But I think both of those guys, the best part of their games is the two-way parts. They’re really good defensively.”

Yes, Horvat cheated more. Yes, he was more aggressive in the second half.

But he didn’t just score more. He led the team in points for three months.

Just maybe this is the area that should be explored. Maybe Horvat needs to be deployed more as an offensive player with offensive opportunities and offensive upside.

If he can really be a 50-point player soon, for a team that’s not loaded with future first-liners, shouldn’t he be given every chance to make that happen?

Maybe not.

“Just having (Brandon) Sutter back, puts (Horvat) in a better spot,” Desjardins says. “It takes the pressure off and lets him play more the way he can play.

“I think (penalty-killing) is his biggest strength. I think it should be his biggest strength. When he came through junior, he was a top defensive player. The part of the game that surprises us is the offensive side. We never knew we had that, really, that he was going to be that good offensively.

“He can be really good defensively and I think we have to, I have to, help him concentrate on that a little bit more and not concentrate on the scoring.”

That sure doesn’t sound like a coach eager to tap into Horvat’s offensive upside.

It suggests Sutter will be counted on in that role. But know this: Sutter has reached 40 points once in his eight-year career.

Horvat did it in his second season.

The most telling moment in Horvat’s career just could be the number of times his name was never mentioned last season.

As the team dipped deeper into last season’s sinkhole, the topic regularly shifted to the Canucks’ young players. Did they get it? Were they doing enough? Were they consistent enough? Did they belong?

As the coach and the team’s oldest players constantly talked about these issues, literally no one ever thought they were talking about the then-20-year-old Horvat.

And to start this year’s training camp, general manager Jim Benning was asked who he thought could fill the leadership vacuum left by Dan Hamhuis’s departure.

The first name he said was Horvat’s.

“This year, I can be more of a leader on and off the ice,” Horvat says. “Last year, it was a tough year at the beginning. I think I became a little bit more vocal. Mostly I just try to lead by example on the ice.

“I am a vocal leader, but at the same time, I’m not the guy who will call guys out or will step up and say something in the room. I still feel too young for that.”

That side of Horvat will be allowed to grow and flourish.

Whether his offensive side will get the same treatment remains to be seen.

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